Impact of the revised FPC uniform system of accounts;

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Impact of the Revised FPC Uniform System of Accounts
BY SAMUEL E. ELLIS Partner, Kansas City Office
Presented before the Annual Convention of the Missouri Valley Electric Association, Kansas City — September 1960
MY SUBJECT has been announced as a talk on the "Impact of the Revised FPC Uniform System of Accounts." Because of the technical nature of the subject, however, I am taking the liberty of presenting it in the form of a paper.
As a general observation, we in the public accounting profes­sion
had hoped that the revision of the system would permit utility accounting more nearly in accordance with generally accepted ac­counting
principles but that does not appear to have happened.
It is a safe assumption that all of you, or at least a majority, have been giving the proposed system a lot of thought since its announcement in 1959, with a view to determining how the revision will affect your company. Presumably everyone has made, or had available, an analysis of differences between the present and pro­posed
system of accounts. Under these circumstances I would con­sider
it a waste of your time and mine to point out the very many minor differences between the two systems and so shall try to con­fine
the discussion to those points of difference that may cause diffi­culty
in execution or that may be subject to several interpretations.
POINTS OF DIFFERENCE
DEFINITIONS
First, the changes in definitions in the proposed and current instructions are minor and do not appear to raise any problems. The only completely new definition relates to Item 30 dealing with "serv­ice
life" and there is little room for disagreement with the proposed definition.
INSTRUCTIONS
The second section of the proposed system deals with general instructions. Changes have been made in the limitations concerning
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